The post links to another article with a few more details: [Imagine that the securitisation industry] had to carry the same level of capital as banks do and to

The post links to another article with a few more details: [Imagine that the securitisation industry] had to carry the same level of capital as banks do and to make an adequate (10%) post-tax profit on that capital. The higher costs entailed give a sense of the scale of the current distortion. On this basis The Economist calculates the subsidy on mortgages to be running at $150 billion a year, 1% of GDP. (This estimate includes the impact of the Fed’s bond-buying on interest rates and the cost of tax breaks on mortgage-interest payments.)